Emilie Meyn

Emilie Meyn (b. 1997, Denmark) is a London based artist, primarily working with painterly monoprints. She received her BA in Illustration and Visual Media from University of the Arts London in 2019. In her practice she explores feminine identity and its relationship to body, sexuality, shame and loss through feminine writing and image-making.

touching;

scratching,

speaking;

kissing,

walking,

seeing,

laughing;

walking,

bathing,

breathing

fucking,

walking,

sleeping,

dreaming,

sleeping,

dreaming,

feel, skin, pore, hair, growing, moulding, caressing, touching, feeling, static, flesh, bulge, sweat, heave, hold, hug, touch, feel, caress, grow, mould, hair, skin, feel

what I couldn’t put into words at the time is now etched into me,

hot beneath my skin.

I work with ideas of the feminine body and its relationship to identity, sexuality, loss and shame. My work is largely autobiographical and my figures are all representative of myself and my experiences living in a feminine body. Using image-making as an extension of myself, creating painterly monoprints from and of my body.

Writing is an important part of my process. Helene Cixous’ essay The laugh of the Medusa, heavily influenced the development of my writing which has translated into my image making as well. Writing and creating in a free flowing stream of consciousness; expressing the unconscious and ineffable, which cannot be found or expressed within structuralist language. Feminine writing has influenced me to write and create more freely.

Hélène Cixous, Keith Cohen, Paula Cohen, ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 1 (1976)

Medium:

Monoprint

Size:

100 x 75 cm // 2022

I was sleeping in bed while he died in bed. How such different actions can seemingly be not that different at all

body limp, unconscious, and finally restful.

Medium:

Monoprint

Size:

100 x 75 cm // 2022

Figurative Identity And Body Painting

That heavy bear who sleeps with me, Monoprint

The title for this work is from the poem The Heavy Bear Who Goes with Me by Delmore Schwartz. In the poem, Schwartz dissects the bear as body; separating the carnal desires and spiritual mind in estrangement through the bear. This dichotomy of mind and body is deeply entrenched within the anatomy of the poem; the bear is all consuming in its desire and hunger; the physical pull of desire is bodily and stronger than the mind.

Delmore Schwartz, ‘The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me', in Selected Poems (1938-1958): Summer Knowledge (New York: Doubleday, 1959), p. 74.

Medium:

Monoprint

Size:

100 x 75 cm // 2022

Body Femininity Figurative Painting

Lower stomach

Lower stomach – Ghost print

Torso (Left side)

Torso (Left side) – Ghost print

Dragging the paint with the body, water aiding the flow. Moving the body to saturate the paper. In movement the paint comes alive, sprouting veins in the form of lines that eventually coagulate.